From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Sat Jul 02 06:49:02 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:49:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.50) id 1DoiMA-0003yS-EV for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:48:30 -0700 Received: from web81304.mail.yahoo.com ([206.190.37.79]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with smtp (Exim 4.50) id 1DoiKK-0003wH-U1 for lojban-list@lojban.org; Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:48:28 -0700 Received: (qmail 53455 invoked by uid 60001); 2 Jul 2005 13:46:35 -0000 Message-ID: <20050702134635.53453.qmail@web81304.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [65.69.50.91] by web81304.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:46:35 PDT Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2005 06:46:35 -0700 (PDT) From: John E Clifford Subject: [lojban] Re: ...but does it work? To: lojban-list@lojban.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 X-Spam-Score: -2.6 (--) X-archive-position: 10253 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: clifford-j@sbcglobal.net Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list --- TC wrote: > What I've gathered from reading about lojban is > that it was ostensibly > created partially to test the Sapir-Whorf > hypothesis... and has anyone > followed through on that? With what results? > > At the very least, do any of you have anecdotal > evidence of speaking lojban > leading to increased clarity of thought or > ability to assimilate ideas, > etc.? > Even the small pilot tests never got made -- for the usual variety of reasons (money). The anecdotal evidences is of a mixed sort: some few have said they thought it helped them in some way but none have demonstrated this improvement on objective tests. Most have reported no improvement that could not be attributed to learning a new language or studying some elementary logic. For serious S-W work, Loglan/Lojban is a lousy vehicle, since S and W were mainly interested in the metaphysical perceptions of speakers and the logical languages are more SAE than any natural language, so ill designed to show metaphysical change for native speakers of SAE languages (the few native speakers of non-SAE languages -- all Chinese I think -- have not weighed in on this discussion -- and all of them already know at least English).